Time, New York, 19 December 1955

With Rod & Gun

When Governor Sir John Harding declared a state of emergency in Cyprus last month,
he decreed jail sentences for demonstrating, death for carrying firearms and "up
to twelve strokes with cane, birch or rod" for rioting by school boys. But still
the agitation for enosis (union) with Greece continued. Last week four British Tommies
were shot down by Sten gunfire from a passing car; a grenade tossed into an army
truck killed its driver.

Reluctantly, Field Marshal Harding ordered a search for hidden weapons in more
than a score of Greek Orthodox monasteries and nunneries. An army spokesman refused
to "say at this time whether the nuns were frisked," but a monk who was carrying an icon-engraved box containing two revolvers was arrested.

While these irritations multiplied, the British in London oddly believed that
conditions were about ripe for a settlement.

In the House of Commons last week, British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan
stated publicly for the first time that he was prepared to promise Cypriots the
right to self-determination. This assurance was once thought to be all that Archbishop
Makarios III, the enosis leader, was waiting for. Instead, the 42-year-old archbishop
dismissed Macmillan's pledge as unsatisfactory because Macmillan had not said when
or how.